Archaeologica.org

Tell me KS, do you find that sarcasm helps in debates?

Roy.

Of course, the idea of Clovis first is pretty much on its way out anyway.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/l ... 56,00.html

New radiocarbon dates from Clovis-site bone, ivory and seeds show that the hunters arrived nearly 500 years later than researchers had thought, at a time when unrelated peoples already lived in North and South America, the researchers conclude.

And it now appears that the Clovis culture bloomed and vanished in just two centuries. It seems "humanly impossible" that a group of hunters and their descendants could have spread across the Americas in such a short time span, Stafford said.

Which leaves a marine landing probably in both North and South America...and, if the Solutrean Hypothesis is borne out, then on both coasts as well.

People who travel by boat should, one would hope, have some knowledge of the sea.

Knuckle sandwhich wrote:There are hundreds of shell midden sites on the NW coast, some of them approach two stories in thickness. Darn near without exception they are less than 3,000 years old, and of those, almost all are less than 2,000 years old. I would expect UK shell middens to be earlier.

Middens are carbonate rich and thus serve to preserve themselves and bone well. Additionally, shell middens typically are attributed to people with much higher populations than pleistocene hunter/gatherers, so more food has to be harvested over-all. Also, it isn't true that there aren't extensive "bone middens," there are. There are gigantic late pleistocene bison bone beds in the US, and the caves of Europe are LOADED with bone from top to bottom, 60 feet thick in some cases. There's also a huge difference in the meat to remains ratio between terrestrial mammals and clams- much of a clam (for the amount of meat) goes into a site and preserves while the majority of a mammal gets eaten (or used) or decomposes. Then, bone does not preserve near as well as shell does in many environments.

Here's a little comparison. Say you have a choice between killing an ancient bison or harvesting clams. The ancient bison is easy to approach and kill for three or four people. You get 1,800+ pounds of meat, bone to use for tools, and a bunch of leather out of it. It can be killed and processed in a day by three or four people. Then there are the clams. You'll get two ounces or so of meat from decent sized ones. That means to equal the bison you need to collect and process 14,400 of them, and then the meat is still not as nutritious as the bison- you'll starve to death eating nothing but clams or fish, which is not the case with bison meat. Then you have to do something else to equal the leather and bone for tools. How long and how many people do you think it would take to harvest and process that many clams? How about even a thousand?

Knuckle Sandwich -

Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions.

Why would three or four people need to process 1800 pounds of meat

Per day?

Doesn't sound like hunting/gathering to me.


Especially when you can head down to the shore at low tide

And gather the few pounds of clams you need for the evening meal.

Next, I am not disputing that there was an inland culture

Which focused on the hunting of inland species.

Which included a hell of a lot of small game in addition to the big species.

I am stating that there was a maritime culture, which,

As we learn more, was most likely a precursor

To what we call Clovis.

This maritime culture was specifically not sedentary,

Which means that the entire argument about "shell middens"

Is a (grin) Red Herring.

The artefact trail of the pre-Clovis North American marine hunter-
gatherers, whether,

Shells, bones, boats or tools, is at its very beginning.

The good news is that a number of very smart people

Are committing their time, their energy, and their careers

To this archaeological/anthropological metric.

I applaud them.


hoka hey


john

Its an interesting disucssion in progress here.

What little research I have done on the topic turns up scant evidence of coastal paleo indians, living off sea mammals, fish and mollusks. There is overwhelming evidence for land mammals as sustenance for the early american peoples. In fact some feel expolitation of marine resources may have begun after the inland sources of food began to go extinct. Now perhaps the evidence is underwater, and if so, it remains unsupported speculation.

Minimalist wrote:...and, if the Solutrean Hypothesis is borne out, then on both coasts as well.

A bi-coastal migration by Solutreans? Hardly seems plausible to me, Min. As you point out, Clovis were only here a very short time. I am perfectly willing to accept they spread across the continent chasing game.

Forum Monk wrote:Its an interesting disucssion in progress here.

What little research I have done on the topic turns up scant evidence of coastal paleo indians, living off sea mammals, fish and mollusks. There is overwhelming evidence for land mammals as sustenance for the early american peoples. In fact some feel expolitation of marine resources may have begun after the inland sources of food began to go extinct. Now perhaps the evidence is underwater, and if so, it remains unsupported speculation.

Minimalist wrote:...and, if the Solutrean Hypothesis is borne out, then on both coasts as well.

A bi-coastal migration by Solutreans? Hardly seems plausible to me, Min. As you point out, Clovis were only here a very short time. I am perfectly willing to accept they spread across the continent chasing game.

Forum Monk -

Just what is this "overwhelming evidence"?

Perhaps you can provide some sources?

And some timelines?



hoka hey


john


ps

http://www.unl.edu/rhames/monte_verde/MonteVerde.htm

A bi-coastal migration by Solutreans? Hardly seems plausible to me, Min. As you point out, Clovis were only here a very short time. I am perfectly willing to accept they spread across the continent chasing game.

I probably could have phrased that better in retrospect, Monk, but, yes....if the Solutrean hypothesis is true...(and Stafford makes a pretty good argument so far) then the Solutreans were on the East Coast and the Asians were on the West Coast which means landings on both coasts.

And unless you want to speculate that someone landed in Peru and crossed the Andes rather than sailing around S America, then both coasts on both continents.

I did not mean to suggest that the Solutreans landed in San Francisco, although I certainly do see how you could have read that into my original post.

Minimalist wrote:I did not mean to suggest that the Solutreans landed in San Francisco, although I certainly do see how you could have read that into my original post.

Yeah, thanks for clearing that up. If Solutreans were the predecessors of Clovis (which for the time being, I doubt) it is clear the Clovis would have spread from the east to the west overland. If Clovis entered across Berengia, they would have scattered across the country from north to south. I have not seen research, but it may be possible to determine which migration pattern seems likely through careful dating of sites, but since the overall period of time involved for Clovis is so short, that seems unlikely.

john wrote:Just what is this "overwhelming evidence"?

Perhaps you can provide some sources?

And some timelines?

Hi John.
It seems pretty much a no-brainer and may be begging the question slightly, but far more inland Clovis aged sites have been found than coastal preclovis or paleo inidian sites.

Further, to reduce their diets and foraging to a relatively restricted diet would be foolish as obviously survival requires a diversity of eating habits, depending on the local conditions. To claim an exclusive diet of mammoth or bison is no longer supported by the evidence. Here are some examples:

The people who made Clovis-type fluted points are incontestably the first to arrive in most parts of late Pleistocene North America, and therefore are closely linked Chronologically with the disapperance of mammoths and mastodonts.
(Gary Haynes 2002, World Archaeology, Vol. 33, No. 3, Ancient Ecodisasters (Feb., 2002), pp. 391-416)

Gault also suggests previous assumptions about Clovis's diet were wrong. Sure, they ate mammoth and bison, but archaeologists are also finding bones from frogs, turtles, snakes and rabbits. "Coming home with three rabbits isn't as dramatic as the museum mural image of Clovis people sneaking up on a mammoth," says Collins's colleague, Andy Hemmings, but probably better reflects day-to-day life.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=tex ... ogical-dig

Animal bones found in the Clovis deposits (Zone 4) hint at a broad-spectrum diet not solely based on big game. Along with bones of horse, camel, bison, and mammoth, investigators also found turtle, racoon, and alligator. At other Clovis sites such as Gault, turtle and small mammals have been identified as well. Turtle, in particular, is gaining attention as the most common type of reptile found in early sites in North America. These findings are challenging the long-held notion of Clovis people as chiefly mammoth hunters.
http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/kinca ... sited.html

We are currently studying the Gypsum Cave fauna reposited at the Los Angeles County Museum. More than twenty species of vertebrates comprise the Gypsum Cave fauna, but the collection is volumetrically dominated by four species of large mammals. These are the Shasta ground sloth (Nothrotheriops shastensis), horse (Equus sp.), camel (Camelops sp.), and mountain sheep (Ovis canadensis). Many of the bones of these large mammals are completely or partially charred, and several display marks, grooves, and fractures that may be the result of butchering by humans. Through a taphonomic analysis of the Gypsum Cave bones, we are testing this hypothesis. Our preliminary results support the interpretation that Clovis hunters butchered Pleistocene mammals at Gypsum Cave.
(GLOWIAK, Elizabeth M. and ROWLAND, Stephen M, 2003 Seattle Annual Meeting (November 2–5, 2003))

From '11,200 to 8,000 years ago, the Great
Plains of North America were populated by small Paleoindian
hunting groups with well developed weaponry and the expertise
to successfully hunt large mammals, especially mammoths
and bison. Mammoths became extinct on the Plains by 11,000
years ago, and, although paleoecological conditions were
worsening, their demise may have been hastened by human
predation. After this, the main target of the Plains Paleoindian
hunters consisted of subspecies of bison, Bison antiquus
and Bison occidentalis. As bison populations gradually diminished,
apparently because of worsening ecological conditions,
by '8,000 years ago, human subsistence was forced into a
greater dependence on small animal and plant foods.
George C. Frison, Department of Anthropology, University of Wyoming, 1998

Now, trying to find evidence of coastal habitation and dependence on maritime foodstuffs is difficult but not impossible:

Evidence of people in California during the Paleo-Indian period is extremely rare; consequently much of what is said about their lifeways is speculative. We know some of the earliest immigrants into California hunted mammoth, sloth, and other large herbivores that browsed beside the huge freshwater lakes then covering much of interior California, including the great Central Valley as well as the drier southeastern parts of the state. Other people, living along the southern California coast by at least 10,000 years ago exploited fish, shellfish and maritime mammals.
...
Like all peoples everywhere in the world at the end of the Ice Age, the First Californians made their living as nomadic gatherers and hunters, taking advantage of various food resources WHEN and WHERE nature provided them, and in amounts as provided by nature. In keeping with their status as "pioneers," the lives of the Paleo-Californians revolved around a relatively few key resources, with several of those resources being major staples throughout the year. People moving into California from adjacent parts of the continent tended to rely on certain game resources, supplemented with a few broadly distributed plant species. Along the coast, certain species of shellfish that were common along the North American coast, along with plants that were easily gathered and prepared, were the key staples.

http://www.cabrillo.edu/~crsmith/anth6_paleo.html

In some regions people seem to have ignored the large game animals, concentrating instead on medium and small game, as well as gathering fruits, berries and leafy greens. And depending upon the region, this gathering-hunting economic mode was coupled with fishing, shellfish collecting, or the taking of sea mammals. For example, archaeologists have recovered from the damp, cramped bear den called On Your Knees Cave on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, the remains of a man who died some 9,200 years ago. Chemical signatures in bits of his jaw and pelvis reveal that he ate a diet heavy in seafood, rather than relying on the meat of abundant deer or bear. Somewhat similarly, Spirit Cave Man, who lived and died in Nevada about 9,400 years ago, lived off of fish taken from a nearby lake and small mammals he had hunted.

http://www.cabrillo.edu/~crsmith/noamer_paleo.html

I am not saying Preclovis people did not exist, they likely did, but the evidence is only now being found. I am not saying that early seafaring did not happen, it may have. But the evidence for it is buried under the sea and in the meantime, a plausible theory for the peopling of the americas already exists.

A number of points here Monk. If the people we are talking about used an ice free land path then I doubt that they even saw the sea, let alone lived off it.
If, on the other hand they, or another group moved down the coast I rather doubt that they progressed inland far enough to see, for example the massive Bison herds.
Any people progressing southwards along the coast would have had no need to move inland.
Virgin forest is a difficult landscape for travel at the sort of speed that seems to have been used in their progress from north to south.
If boats were used in their movement from N to S then the occupation sites are unlikely to have extended sufficiently far in land to have avoided inundation.
The precise same problem exists in the movement into Australia, very few inland occupation sites have been found, the supposition is again that they are beneath the ocean.

Roy.

Digit, there may have been people that came down the ice free corridor, but it wasn't open yet when people first started arriving.

The NW coast was largely an extension of Beringia and all the evidence suggests it supported a considerable biomass of large mammals including bison. They had plenty of time to move inland if desired because it was open for at least several thousand years. Also, it wasn't forested back then, it was a rich periglacial tundra with a mosaic of plant communities. Remember, we aren't talking about a very narrow stretch that is restricted to the beaches, we are talking about a considerably large chunk of land that was a hundred or more miles wide at most points (and that's based on current topography, surely there were extensive moraines that have since eroded away).

Also, as I said earlier, there are raised paleo-shorelines all up and down the coast, so it isn't all underwater.

Forum monk, it sounds like you've done some reading.

John I didn't say 3 or 4 people need it all to themselves- The point is that clamming requires way more energy out-put for similar but reduced returns. Feeding a group of H/Gs on clams requires a heck of a lot of work by comparison.

But you keep changing the time scale KS, the original post concerns a period of about 12KBP, which was palaeolithic, as I pointed out earlier, in that area.
Also the NA Bison is an indigenous species and would have been confined to the grass lands south of the ice. Undoubtedly mastodons would have been able to cross an ice free barrier but as I recall they were also indigenous, not the Asiatic form.
Also the existence of an ice free corridor is now being questioned, on what evidence I am unsure.
12KBP no doubt an inland culture, but homo had reached to the southern tip of SA by then, a most unlikely land based scenario.
The fact that some palaeolithic coastal areas are above sea level doesn't mean they were occupied.
To return to my earlier point, the numerous tools being washed ashore on the western coast.
Unless the locale is shown to have hosted a land based economy then the logical deduction must be that they are evidence of a coastal economy.
I did suggest that coastal meant beach parties.

If you mean 12K conventional, that is pre-Clovis and is closer to when the NW coast was open at some 15,000 or 16,000 BP (conventional). 12K calibrated (10,000 BP conventional) is after Clovis and is getting towards the last gasp of paleolithic in NA except for on the plains where it lasted later due to high value bison surviving there. I read a paper in American Antiquity recently that addressed the ice free corridor, it suggested that it didn't even open (if it even opened) up until after Clovis had already started. So the ball game was already well under way by that time.

Then we've got Monte Verde, Meadowcroft, and Cactus Hill strongly suggesting there were people here long before Clovis. Meadowcroft and Monte Verde suffered an incredible barrage of criticism and skepticism, but they were so solid that they are widely accepted now and after more scrutiny by many times than other sites get. Then there are the recent finds of post-glacial but pre-Clovis and Clovis age bison that were butchered on the southern NW coast (San Juan Islands) at 11,760 BP down to 10,900 BP conventional. Also there are the 12K (conventional) turds found in OR.

About the bison, well, they were originally Asian, but you are right about antiquus being below the ice sheets. But there were priscus above them. The antiquus moved north into the foot-print of at least the southern Cordilleran after deglatiation very quickly, so we know they expanded their range if given the opportunity and a rich environment.

Keep in mind also, that the coast opened up, then was closed for a period later by the southern advance. This leaves the northern NW coast as the place to look for the real early stuff, and people are now finally starting to do that instead of looking entirely for shell middens (40 years of that yielded about 99.9999999.9% non-paleolithic sites). A lot has been discovered about that area since Erlandson and Moss. They're getting lots of good stuff out of the karst caves up there that help show what it was like back then, but so far there are no pre-Clovis finds from up there. People just started looking fairly recently though, so it may take time, or the NW coast initial migration hypothesis might prove incorrect. Another possibility is that is was along the NW coast but it was pre-glacial (Wisconsin).

At any rate, at the time frames we are looking at for the initial migration there weren't any marine adapted h/gs in the temperate world, they were all still concerned with large game. Now in areas of high populations in tropical areas we see some marine adaption that early because they are resource poor environments. If such h/gs colonized the new world, that sort of behavior would be short lived.

Some of you may find this interesting.
Kenosha County is the very South East corner of WI.
Right on the IL/WI state line.
The dig site is about 10 miles from the current Lake Michigan shoreline.
Note the dating.

http://www.woollymammoth.org/Hebior.htm

http://www.woollymammoth.org/Schafer.htm

I have seen the bones many times. Bringing the grandkids and such.
I would have to be pretty hungry to after one of these with a pointed stick!
Now, waiting until they got bogged down in a swamp?
Maybe.
I may have done stranger things when I was young and dumb, but I cannot remember.

How about poisoning it instead? One heckuva lot safer.

Listeros,

On my two web sites, I try and post everything of interest in this area both news and articles that are credible.

Here they are;

Mike Ruggeri's Pre-Clovis and Clovis World
http://tinyurl.com/2m8725

Mike Ruggeri's
Breaking Pre-Clovis and Clovis News
http://community-2.webtv.net/Topiltzin- ... index.html

Mike Ruggeri